Case Study Week Three: Typography

Business cards and letterhead for Rosin Preservation. And a floaty pen! Because it's the 21st century, we created a digital version of the letterhead as well.

Some design decisions are only arrived at after hours, days, even weeks of pondering, trying, failing and trying again. Others times they arrive at first blush, and are so naturally right that there’s no point in laboring any further. Our font section for Rosin Preservation followed the latter path.

They were using Helvetica, a sturdy typographic warhorse if ever there was one. We’re not opposed to that Swiss classic (both Target and Toyota, to cite two high-profile examples, employ it to excellent effect), but so many designers have defaulted to it for so many decades we’ve largely struck it from our list.

Our font choice, Gotham, was developed in the year 2000 and achieved almost instant universal acceptance in the design community. It is so widely used today that we even refer to it as the Helvetica of the aughts (Our comparison is a compliment, not an insult!) The typeface has two antecedents, really: the hand-cut and hand-painted signs that pepper the New York streetscape; and the no-nonsense, geometric letterforms (think Futura) that were key components of the vocabulary of building and architectural signage in large American cities during the middle decades of the 20th century. We feel it's a perfect synthesis of geometric and humanist forms, and perfectly expresses our client’s historic preservation mission. Even better, it comes in a huge variety of widths and weights, permitting endless variety when developing a suite of branded materials.